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Correct. A scam here in Baltimore that keeps occurring is that the squeege kids will run up on someone unsuspecting and start cleaning their windshield. They

Correct. A scam here in Baltimore that keeps occurring is that the squeege kids will run up on someone unsuspecting and start cleaning their windshield. They will pressure the driver for a tip, and the driver will say they don’t have cash of course. They will say that’s cool, you can send me a tip. They ask the driver for their phone so they can look up their cashapp for them, and bam the driver got scammed. What’s happening is that the squeege kid is looking up his account on your phone, and then sending himself like $2,000. People have complained that cashapp won’t help, and their bank isn’t letting them dispute the charge. In my opinion, this is clearly an anti pattern on Cashapps end, and I would imagine at least one engineer would have spotted this vulnerability by now. I would think that Cashapp would build in a simple pin confirmation before a stranger could wire themselves a couple thousand dollars. This has bugged me for the last 2 years lol

jstx1 4y ago
I don't think you have anyone to blame if you give your phone with a logged in money app to a stranger who is begging for money.
- hoofhearted 4y ago
  It’s a high pressure situation in the middle of rush hour traffic. They like to target unsuspecting older white people, and unaware females. If you get aggressive, they will spit on your window, break your wipers off, and hit your car. Things can get really ugly if you get out of your car and try to confront them: https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/watch-video-shows-final-seconds-of-confrontation-between-timothy-reynolds-squeegee-workers-TQUTLVWWU5APVAF3QQFXNSLWLU/ https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/criminal-justic...
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    This is not CashApp's responsibility to fix any more than it would be the US Treasury's responsibility to fix if I hand them a $100 bill.
    - Pet_Ant 4y ago
      If they ask for $10 and you give them a $100 asking for change yes it is the police's job to fix.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    Cashapp doesnt bear the responsability of highway robbermen
    - hoofhearted 4y ago
      So you’re validating what Hindenburg research is saying correct? A bunch of their transaction volume is scam money that is hard to reverse, and it’s not Blocks fault as you say.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > I don't think you have anyone to blame It’s a negligent move for sure, but a crime is still a crime. Having someone steal your money without your consent is still theft and they are still the perpetrator of the crime. The victim-blaming mentality on the internet is wild. Being negligent or naive doesn’t shift 100% of the blame to the victim when a crime occurs.
  - hoofhearted 4y ago
    And then you call them to complain that someone was able to drain your bank account, and they say “sorry, you’re on your own”
  - jstx1 4y ago
    You're focusing on whether it's the phone owner's fault or the thief's fault, my point is that it isn't the app's fault.
  - efitz 4y ago
    It drives me nuts that anytime you indicate that a victim behaved unwisely and caution others to behave wisely to help avoid being victimized in the same way, somebody always gets their hackles up about “victim blaming”. Two things can be true at once: the perpetrator of a crime is the one responsible, AND the victim might have avoided victimhood had they acted more prudently. Humans communicate in stories. The “cautionary tale” or example of folly that led to woe is a pattern as old as our species could talk. It is NOT true that cautioning people not to act imprudently, and providing an example, is “victim blaming”. I don’t hear anyone saying that we should not pursue and prosecute the perpetrator. So just can it with the hair trigger “victim blaming” accusation.
    - richrichardsson 4y ago
      > I don't think you have anyone to blame if you give your phone with a logged in money app to a stranger who is begging for money. > caution others to behave wisely to help avoid being victimized in the same way In this case though this is not a caution to others, it's literally a statement of victim shaming/blaming.
qclibre22 4y ago
Banks siding with Silicon Valley firms and not the bank customer is common. Try blocking a vendor that tricked you into signing up. Bank won't help.
bfeynman 4y ago
That is entirely on you if you give away your phone to those kids. I would think they would just run away with it
- hoofhearted 4y ago
  You’re minimizing major fraud being committed by juveniles, and it’s easy money for them lol.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    It is not fraud, it is theft. It has nothing to do with Cash app. It could just as well be Zelle, or PayPal, or Venmo, or physical cash.
    - starkparker 4y ago
      Zelle, PayPal, and Venmo have more in place to trace or recover illegal transactions, or at least to make creating and deleting accounts to move illegally acquired money more difficult. The link's whole thesis is that Cash App doesn't really care, which is why criminals prefer it. Being so radically frictionless for the underbanked also facilitates scams, including those that distinguish between theft and fraud.
- cccybernetic 4y ago
  I was born outside the US and we had local gangsters that would walk up to you in the middle of the street and try to “sell” you a brick. Like a brick that you build a house or wall with. They would show it to you, and tell you that it was a great brick and that you should buy it. If you told them you didn’t want the brick, they would assure you that yes you most certainly do want the brick. You then bought the brick from them. You can probably image what the brick was used for if you refused to purchase it. I'm not familiar with this situation, but I'm assuming that whoever is doing this isn't there to "clean" your windshield, and that the entire "transaction" is imbued with the implicit threat of violence and intimidation. You're essentially being robbed through other means. If this isn't the case, then I'm happy to admit that I'm wrong, but that's how it reads to me.
hotpotamus 4y ago
I mean, it's also an anti-pattern with wallets if you hand them your wallet full of cash and tell them to take a tip. A PIN is not a bad idea though. I think this might be an actual generational difference; I feel weird letting someone else use my phone or using someone else's phone now. I can remember a time when phones were much more communal - the family shared a phone, and public phones existed, and I wonder if older folks are a bit more locked into that way of thinking. Obviously a phone is much more than a phone now however.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  The vast vast majority of people don't go around with a wallet full of cash for obvious reasons. If having the application installed is equivalent of going around with such a wallet, then at the very least it points to flaw.
- lanstin 4y ago
  I answer my wife’s phone from time to time and I always feel weird doing it, and feel that I have surprised the other end. On the other hand, my phone causes ringing on my phone, my IPad and my work laptop: for the love of G-d don’t just watch it or tell me it is ringing, answer the damn phone. U less it says likely scam of course.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  I don't know if it's a scam but there's been guys hanging around the local greyhound station with stories like "my phone battery died while I was on the bus, can I use your phone to call my buddy to pick me up". And I don't want to be a jerk but something about it felt a bit too pushy, and if I give then my phone I was probably never going to see it or them again. Now just giving it unlocked to a squeegee kid? Hell no, that's just plain naive.
  - msm_ 4y ago
    I thought so too, but then I actually once gave my phone to someone in need, and they... just called someone and returned my phone back to me. I was actually expecting a trick. I guess we need to be more trusting sometimes, and help each other more often (I mean, losing a phone happens to people and can be a real problem)
LBJsPNS 4y ago
Roll up windows, lock doors, turn on windshield wipers. This scam was rampant in L.A. in the 1980s.
- hoofhearted 4y ago
  The states attorney for Maryland in Baltimore lost her re-election bid because she refused to prosecute kids running a racket on the busiest streets. A guy did exactly what you said, and they snapped his wipers off his truck. He parked highly upset, and stepped out with a bat to confront the kids. One of them pulled out a handgun and shot the dude down right in rush hour traffic. She lost her job, and the city started enforcing a no squeege ban.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    I can’t imagine being willing to die for my windshield wipers. Go home, call your insurance company, and avoid that area in the future.
finfrastrcuture 4y ago
This reminds me of Brazilian banks which have introduced "Street Mode" to secure your banking app while out of the home: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/nubank-will-have-a-mode-to-restrict-out-of-home-app-usage/ https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/nubank-wil...
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  "Brazilianization" is a real phenomenon, isn't it? One wishes we weren't going that way in the West, but we are.
  - anovikov 4y ago
    Maybe it is a bit too much, but in general, Western societies should work on educating people to greatly reduce their amount of trust in other people. Current Western trust levels are simply not reflective of reality: they were meant for a white society with a single, enforced religion, where everyone was shaking in fear of divine punishment. We live in a global world now and vast majority of it never had or expected a similar level of trust, they are taking advantage of you way too easily. Including billion strong nations that had no concept of God for millennia and no concept of conscience.
    - smolder 4y ago
      Reducing trust is better in some respects, but deeply harmful in others. What would be great instead is to increase accountability so that it's safer to trust. In the case of scam money transfers, a path to reversal would be a start.
      - throwayyy479087 4y ago
        The vast majority of commenters here vote to dismantle the methods of accountability. This proposition won’t happen as long as the PMC class remain insulated from rapidly rising crime.
      - 4y ago
sidm83 4y ago
In India, apps like Google Pay (which runs on UPI platform) require you to first unlock the app using your screen lock method and then also require entry of a pin to confirm any kind of money transfer.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  not only that, the pin entry page very clearly shows the recipient, the amount and the option to see technical info like refids. moreover the ui is exactly the same whichever app you use to initiate the payment (as opposed to the dumpster fire that is zelle). this has been the case since day 1 of upi. Honestly the fact that some govt employee in india got so much right that all the sv startups could not is truly baffling.
balderdash 4y ago
I feel like there should be two levels of unlocked phones 1 which is full unlocked (access key apps, photos, settings, etc.) and like a guest mode (phone, web browser, weather app, calculator, etc)
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  Android has this, in the form of guest profiles. though i dont know about anyone who uses it this way and pixel for whatever reason disables it by default. some chinese oems have a good interface for this though
- leanderleeco 4y ago
  I learned recently you can do this with screen time on iOS.
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
A "time delay safe" function in the app could accomplish the same thing. I'd certainly want to take 30 minutes to think about it (or login and unlock large transfers 30 minutes ahead of time) if I was going to spend more than a couple hundred dollars. Right now, muggers can't take $1000 out of my wallet because I don't have $1000 in my wallet. They cannot force me to use an ATM to empty my bank account because my ATM daily limits are set to $500/day. But, in theory, they could empty it if I was on Cashapp. Cashapp, like so many tech startups rushing to replace incumbent taxi and hotel and other services with phone apps, has missed Chesterton's fence on this state of affairs in its hurry to become the key part of "providing everyone with access to important financial services so they can fully participate in the economy."
- tedivm 4y ago
  >Right now, muggers can't take $1000 out of my wallet because I don't have $1000 in my wallet. They cannot force me to use an ATM to empty my bank account because my ATM daily limits are set to $500/day. When I moved to california my debit card got skimmed at a Lucky grocery store. Ever since then I've made sure that my debit card, venmo, paypal, and all my other money accounts are linked to a checking account that only has $500 in it. If I need to transfer someone more than that I'll transfer money into that account from my real checking account.
  - ZephyrBlu 4y ago
    It continually amazes how advanced yet also how backwards the US is.
djbusby 4y ago
Zelle has the same issue. Cannot unwind a fraudulent transaction. So, just avoid CashApp and Zelle.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  It's not that you can't unwind them, it's that you can't do so through normal channels. Complain to the Office of the Comptroller of Currency and it will get fixed. I'd still avoid those apps, but I don't want anyone who got scammed to read your comment and give up hope.
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Didn't work for me.
MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
> squeege kids And another euphemism.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  They’re literally groups of teenagers with squeegees. What do you think they should be called? Nephilim?
martythemaniak 4y ago
CashApp -> Settings -> Privacy & Security. Top option is to turn on PIN or biometrics to open the app, or to move money. This has been there for many, many years. This is the 12th reply to your post and first one to point this out. I think this report is trying to ride well-off people's lack of awareness of CashApp. Kinda what they're accusing Block of doing, which is funny.
rrrx3 4y ago
Been seeing some tiktoks on this exact scam being run in bars, too - a man/lady will chat the victim up, ask for their phone to put in their number, and then go to cashapp and send themselves money, and disappear into the night. And yes, no recourse for the victim at all.
Sandworm5639 4y ago
How does this end if you don't have CashApp installed?

jstx1 4y ago

I don't think you have anyone to blame if you give your phone with a logged in money app to a stranger who is begging for money.

hoofhearted 4y ago
It’s a high pressure situation in the middle of rush hour traffic. They like to target unsuspecting older white people, and unaware females. If you get aggressive, they will spit on your window, break your wipers off, and hit your car. Things can get really ugly if you get out of your car and try to confront them: https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/watch-video-shows-final-seconds-of-confrontation-between-timothy-reynolds-squeegee-workers-TQUTLVWWU5APVAF3QQFXNSLWLU/ https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/criminal-justic...
- sokoloff 4y ago
  This is not CashApp's responsibility to fix any more than it would be the US Treasury's responsibility to fix if I hand them a $100 bill.
  - Pet_Ant 4y ago
    If they ask for $10 and you give them a $100 asking for change yes it is the police's job to fix.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  Cashapp doesnt bear the responsability of highway robbermen
  - hoofhearted 4y ago
    So you’re validating what Hindenburg research is saying correct? A bunch of their transaction volume is scam money that is hard to reverse, and it’s not Blocks fault as you say.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> I don't think you have anyone to blame It’s a negligent move for sure, but a crime is still a crime. Having someone steal your money without your consent is still theft and they are still the perpetrator of the crime. The victim-blaming mentality on the internet is wild. Being negligent or naive doesn’t shift 100% of the blame to the victim when a crime occurs.
- hoofhearted 4y ago
  And then you call them to complain that someone was able to drain your bank account, and they say “sorry, you’re on your own”
- jstx1 4y ago
  You're focusing on whether it's the phone owner's fault or the thief's fault, my point is that it isn't the app's fault.
- efitz 4y ago
  It drives me nuts that anytime you indicate that a victim behaved unwisely and caution others to behave wisely to help avoid being victimized in the same way, somebody always gets their hackles up about “victim blaming”. Two things can be true at once: the perpetrator of a crime is the one responsible, AND the victim might have avoided victimhood had they acted more prudently. Humans communicate in stories. The “cautionary tale” or example of folly that led to woe is a pattern as old as our species could talk. It is NOT true that cautioning people not to act imprudently, and providing an example, is “victim blaming”. I don’t hear anyone saying that we should not pursue and prosecute the perpetrator. So just can it with the hair trigger “victim blaming” accusation.
  - richrichardsson 4y ago
    > I don't think you have anyone to blame if you give your phone with a logged in money app to a stranger who is begging for money. > caution others to behave wisely to help avoid being victimized in the same way In this case though this is not a caution to others, it's literally a statement of victim shaming/blaming.

qclibre22 4y ago

Banks siding with Silicon Valley firms and not the bank customer is common. Try blocking a vendor that tricked you into signing up. Bank won't help.

bfeynman 4y ago

That is entirely on you if you give away your phone to those kids. I would think they would just run away with it

hoofhearted 4y ago
You’re minimizing major fraud being committed by juveniles, and it’s easy money for them lol.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It is not fraud, it is theft. It has nothing to do with Cash app. It could just as well be Zelle, or PayPal, or Venmo, or physical cash.
  - starkparker 4y ago
    Zelle, PayPal, and Venmo have more in place to trace or recover illegal transactions, or at least to make creating and deleting accounts to move illegally acquired money more difficult. The link's whole thesis is that Cash App doesn't really care, which is why criminals prefer it. Being so radically frictionless for the underbanked also facilitates scams, including those that distinguish between theft and fraud.
cccybernetic 4y ago
I was born outside the US and we had local gangsters that would walk up to you in the middle of the street and try to “sell” you a brick. Like a brick that you build a house or wall with. They would show it to you, and tell you that it was a great brick and that you should buy it. If you told them you didn’t want the brick, they would assure you that yes you most certainly do want the brick. You then bought the brick from them. You can probably image what the brick was used for if you refused to purchase it. I'm not familiar with this situation, but I'm assuming that whoever is doing this isn't there to "clean" your windshield, and that the entire "transaction" is imbued with the implicit threat of violence and intimidation. You're essentially being robbed through other means. If this isn't the case, then I'm happy to admit that I'm wrong, but that's how it reads to me.

hotpotamus 4y ago

I mean, it's also an anti-pattern with wallets if you hand them your wallet full of cash and tell them to take a tip. A PIN is not a bad idea though. I think this might be an actual generational difference; I feel weird letting someone else use my phone or using someone else's phone now. I can remember a time when phones were much more communal - the family shared a phone, and public phones existed, and I wonder if older folks are a bit more locked into that way of thinking. Obviously a phone is much more than a phone now however.

gpderetta 4y ago
The vast vast majority of people don't go around with a wallet full of cash for obvious reasons. If having the application installed is equivalent of going around with such a wallet, then at the very least it points to flaw.
lanstin 4y ago
I answer my wife’s phone from time to time and I always feel weird doing it, and feel that I have surprised the other end. On the other hand, my phone causes ringing on my phone, my IPad and my work laptop: for the love of G-d don’t just watch it or tell me it is ringing, answer the damn phone. U less it says likely scam of course.
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
I don't know if it's a scam but there's been guys hanging around the local greyhound station with stories like "my phone battery died while I was on the bus, can I use your phone to call my buddy to pick me up". And I don't want to be a jerk but something about it felt a bit too pushy, and if I give then my phone I was probably never going to see it or them again. Now just giving it unlocked to a squeegee kid? Hell no, that's just plain naive.
- msm_ 4y ago
  I thought so too, but then I actually once gave my phone to someone in need, and they... just called someone and returned my phone back to me. I was actually expecting a trick. I guess we need to be more trusting sometimes, and help each other more often (I mean, losing a phone happens to people and can be a real problem)

LBJsPNS 4y ago

Roll up windows, lock doors, turn on windshield wipers. This scam was rampant in L.A. in the 1980s.

hoofhearted 4y ago
The states attorney for Maryland in Baltimore lost her re-election bid because she refused to prosecute kids running a racket on the busiest streets. A guy did exactly what you said, and they snapped his wipers off his truck. He parked highly upset, and stepped out with a bat to confront the kids. One of them pulled out a handgun and shot the dude down right in rush hour traffic. She lost her job, and the city started enforcing a no squeege ban.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  I can’t imagine being willing to die for my windshield wipers. Go home, call your insurance company, and avoid that area in the future.

finfrastrcuture 4y ago

This reminds me of Brazilian banks which have introduced "Street Mode" to secure your banking app while out of the home: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/nubank-will-have-a-mode-to-restrict-out-of-home-app-usage/ https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/nubank-wil...

HarryHirsch 4y ago
"Brazilianization" is a real phenomenon, isn't it? One wishes we weren't going that way in the West, but we are.
- anovikov 4y ago
  Maybe it is a bit too much, but in general, Western societies should work on educating people to greatly reduce their amount of trust in other people. Current Western trust levels are simply not reflective of reality: they were meant for a white society with a single, enforced religion, where everyone was shaking in fear of divine punishment. We live in a global world now and vast majority of it never had or expected a similar level of trust, they are taking advantage of you way too easily. Including billion strong nations that had no concept of God for millennia and no concept of conscience.
  - smolder 4y ago
    Reducing trust is better in some respects, but deeply harmful in others. What would be great instead is to increase accountability so that it's safer to trust. In the case of scam money transfers, a path to reversal would be a start.
    - throwayyy479087 4y ago
      The vast majority of commenters here vote to dismantle the methods of accountability. This proposition won’t happen as long as the PMC class remain insulated from rapidly rising crime.
    - 4y ago

sidm83 4y ago

In India, apps like Google Pay (which runs on UPI platform) require you to first unlock the app using your screen lock method and then also require entry of a pin to confirm any kind of money transfer.

cuteboy19 4y ago
not only that, the pin entry page very clearly shows the recipient, the amount and the option to see technical info like refids. moreover the ui is exactly the same whichever app you use to initiate the payment (as opposed to the dumpster fire that is zelle). this has been the case since day 1 of upi. Honestly the fact that some govt employee in india got so much right that all the sv startups could not is truly baffling.

balderdash 4y ago

I feel like there should be two levels of unlocked phones 1 which is full unlocked (access key apps, photos, settings, etc.) and like a guest mode (phone, web browser, weather app, calculator, etc)

cuteboy19 4y ago
Android has this, in the form of guest profiles. though i dont know about anyone who uses it this way and pixel for whatever reason disables it by default. some chinese oems have a good interface for this though
leanderleeco 4y ago
I learned recently you can do this with screen time on iOS.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

A "time delay safe" function in the app could accomplish the same thing. I'd certainly want to take 30 minutes to think about it (or login and unlock large transfers 30 minutes ahead of time) if I was going to spend more than a couple hundred dollars. Right now, muggers can't take $1000 out of my wallet because I don't have $1000 in my wallet. They cannot force me to use an ATM to empty my bank account because my ATM daily limits are set to $500/day. But, in theory, they could empty it if I was on Cashapp. Cashapp, like so many tech startups rushing to replace incumbent taxi and hotel and other services with phone apps, has missed Chesterton's fence on this state of affairs in its hurry to become the key part of "providing everyone with access to important financial services so they can fully participate in the economy."

tedivm 4y ago
>Right now, muggers can't take $1000 out of my wallet because I don't have $1000 in my wallet. They cannot force me to use an ATM to empty my bank account because my ATM daily limits are set to $500/day. When I moved to california my debit card got skimmed at a Lucky grocery store. Ever since then I've made sure that my debit card, venmo, paypal, and all my other money accounts are linked to a checking account that only has $500 in it. If I need to transfer someone more than that I'll transfer money into that account from my real checking account.
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  It continually amazes how advanced yet also how backwards the US is.

djbusby 4y ago

Zelle has the same issue. Cannot unwind a fraudulent transaction. So, just avoid CashApp and Zelle.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ProjectArcturis 4y ago
It's not that you can't unwind them, it's that you can't do so through normal channels. Complain to the Office of the Comptroller of Currency and it will get fixed. I'd still avoid those apps, but I don't want anyone who got scammed to read your comment and give up hope.
- djbusby 4y ago
  Didn't work for me.

MrBuddyCasino 4y ago

> squeege kids And another euphemism.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwayyy479087 4y ago
They’re literally groups of teenagers with squeegees. What do you think they should be called? Nephilim?

martythemaniak 4y ago

CashApp -> Settings -> Privacy & Security. Top option is to turn on PIN or biometrics to open the app, or to move money. This has been there for many, many years. This is the 12th reply to your post and first one to point this out. I think this report is trying to ride well-off people's lack of awareness of CashApp. Kinda what they're accusing Block of doing, which is funny.

rrrx3 4y ago

Been seeing some tiktoks on this exact scam being run in bars, too - a man/lady will chat the victim up, ask for their phone to put in their number, and then go to cashapp and send themselves money, and disappear into the night. And yes, no recourse for the victim at all.

Sandworm5639 4y ago

How does this end if you don't have CashApp installed?